


The Wish For Healing Is Half of Health - Platonic VLD Week Day #6

by hufflepirate



Series: Platonic VLD Week [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Caretaking, Coughing, Fever, Friendship, Gen, Nursing, Reconciliation, Sickfic, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 02:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10065722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Allura never thought she would be glad Keith was part Galra, but with all four of their human teammates down for the count with a nasty viral infection, she's just happy she and Coran aren't alone.  The humans might not be the only ones healing.Prompt was Injury / Healing





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a modified quote from Seneca's Phaedra. The original is 'has always been' or 'has ever been' or however you wanna translate that verb tense instead of 'is.'

Allura felt stretched thin, almost as exhausted as her patients. She'd never felt like she was good at taking care of sick people, but Coran couldn't exactly look after all the humans at once, all by himself.

The sound of running feet in the hallway, followed by the sound of someone throwing up in the paladins' bathroom, told her one of their charges needed help again, but she was just so tired. Tired of doing this. Tired of worrying. Tired of bodily fluids. The paladins were finally getting better, probably, but it was just such a long process.

Keith got up out of the chair next to her, patting her shoulder on his way past. "I got it. I think it's Pidge again."

When they found out that Keith was part Galra, she'd never expected to be glad about that. She'd passed 'glad' two days ago, and had made it to thrilled. Whatever this virus was that had laid up their teammates for 4 days, Keith's Galra blood seemed to have made him immune, and having a third person to help out felt like the only way she could get through this.

Keith wasn't great with sick people either, not like Coran was, so after a few deep breaths to center herself and calm down, she reached for a little more strength and got up to help. Even if he had Pidge covered, it was about time to check on the others anyway. Coran was in the kitchen, making a nutritious, sick-paladin-friendly lunch they were all probably going to complain about anyway. Earlier in the week, he might have left things on the stove to check in on the paladins, instead of leaving Allura and Keith to do it, but even _he_ seemed tired of playing nurse today, and that made all of this feel even more overwhelming.

Pidge was just visible through the open bathroom door at the end of the hall, hunched over and throwing up while Keith rubbed her back, and Allura forced herself not to shudder. Mopping up sweat and emptying buckets full of snotty handkerchiefs into the washing machine were bad, but she could handle them. Vomit duty was almost too much.

She poked her head in on the others. Hunk was sleeping, which was a nice change. He'd had the worst cough and it had been keeping him up, but once Lance's fever came down enough for him to be coherent, he'd suggested they prop Hunk up with pillows, and it looked like that was actually working.

Lance was awake, and sniffling loudly enough that she could hear him through his door. She almost didn't go in, but then Keith looked up at her from the bathroom, probably just trying to see who was there, and she felt like she couldn't get out of it, now.

"Princess!" Lance exclaimed, "I knew you'd be worried about me!" Lance's eyes weren't nearly as glassy as they had been recently, and he probably knew what he was saying. Probably. A hard sneeze almost knocked him over, and she swept into the room, handing him a clean handkerchief from the table next to him. He clutched it to his chest, "Ahh, my lady's handkerchief! I'll cherish it forever!" He was trying to make her laugh, and sometimes it would have worked. But she was _so tired_.

"You'll wipe your nose on it," she said back, trying to sound jovial instead of harsh and mostly making it, "And then you'll throw it in the basket with the other ones so I can wash it."

"Never! When a beautiful-" another sneeze interrupted whatever melodramatic speech he had planned, followed by a second and a third, the last one hard enough to leave him drooling. He wiped his nose and mouth on the handkerchief. "Oh, never mind," he said, his own exhaustion and irritation peeking through for a moment.

Allura suddenly felt bad. "Don't worry, my brave knight. I'll bring you another stack after the next round of laundry." Lance laughed, then coughed, then winced. "I'll check on you later," she told him, not sure what else to say when she couldn't really do anything about how bad he still felt. He nodded, rubbing his side. He'd been whiny for the first day and a half, then delirious with fever for a while after that, but he seemed to have evened out now. It was kind of a relief, though it would be a bigger relief when the paladins were finally well again.

As she stepped into the hall, she heard Pidge insist, "I can wash my _own_ face, Keith, I'm not a _child_." Pidge was prickly, these days. She didn't like being sick. Not that anyone else did, either, but Pidge was the most savage about it.

"I know," Keith answered. Allura peeked through the door on the way past, catching Keith's eye and giving him an encouraging smile. He had a hand wrapped around Pidge's elbow, steadying her, but he was letting her wipe her face on her own.

Shiro was awake but listless, lying on his side and staring at the wall.

"How are you doing?" she asked quietly.

"If I don't move at all, I think I can keep myself from coughing," he answered quietly, "So, doing a little better." The last bit was accompanied by a weak smile that she felt her own mouth mirroring, in spite of everything.

"I should check your temperature," she said gently.

"As long as I don't have to move."

She slid the thermometer's sensor under his tongue and read the number that came out. The calculations to go from degrees Altean to degrees Fahrenheit had been difficult and frustrating four days ago, but now she could do them in her head. "100.7," she announced. "It's still coming down."

"Yeah," he said, "I thought so. I feel less achey today than yesterday. Except all the coughing muscles. They're pretty much the same."

She laid her hand on his forehead. It had seemed like a weird earth custom at first, when all the paladins were first getting sick and kept standing around in circles with their hands on each other's foreheads debating about whether all of them or none of them had fevers. Now, she understood it. Lance's fever had been the highest, and at its worst, she'd been able to feel the heat coming off him from several inches away. It had been frightening, but it had also meant they could have some idea how bad his fever was even when he wasn't awake enough to have his temperature taken correctly.

Shiro felt better to the touch. She hoped he was getting better.

"You should try to sleep," she told him, "I'll leave and let you get some sleep."

"Thanks, Allura."

Shiro always said thank you, and never whined, really, and if his jokes had drifted from stoic and into morbid for a little bit in the middle of his illness, it was still probably better than listening to Lance and Hunk whining or Pidge yelling at them to go away. She smiled at Shiro on her way to the door. "You're welcome."

She stopped in the doorway to let Keith carry Pidge past her. She suspected that Pidge had probably fought against being carried, but the way the girl had been swaying on her feet as she washed her face, even with Keith's hand on her elbow to support her, suggested that carrying her was a good idea.

Keith rolled his eyes at Allura as he walked past. Pidge was snuggled up against his chest like she meant to be there and looked perfectly comfortable, but the expression on her face told Allura that Pidge had gone ahead and argued about it anyway. Just like she'd argued about everything they'd brought her to eat, about the day they'd made her get out of bed so they could change her sheets, about the bath they'd made her take yesterday, and about nearly everything else.

Allura didn't laugh, but it was a close one. She hovered at Pidge's door while Keith tucked their smallest patient back into bed and tried to keep a straight face so Pidge wouldn't know.

"'M not a baby."

"I know."

"Mkay."

Keith's matter-of-fact acknowledgment of everything Pidge said seemed to calm her down better than any of the wheedling or apologizing she and Coran had been doing. Allura made a mental note of it.

As she and Keith retreated to the couches by the training deck and sank into seats next to each other, she turned to look at him.

"I hope they get better soon. I had no idea this would be so exhausting."

Keith nodded. "Yeah. It's been a while since I was sick around other people. I forgot how much there is that people do. I'm used to it just being, like... try to keep myself alive and worry about what's actually best later. There's lots of choices when it's not you who's sick."

"You used to be sick by yourself?"

"Yeah. In the dorms at the Garrison, once, and then out in the desert. That one was rough, 'cause I thought I was gonna run out of food and there wasn't anything I could do about it. But I ended up being ok."

Allura had never been sick by herself in her life. It had never occurred to her that that _happened_ to people.

"I'm sorry, Keith. I wish I could have been there to help."

Keith laughed. "No, you don't. This is exhausting."

She laughed. "Fine, I don't right _now_. But I would if we'd had a break for a while. Healing yourself isn't any easier than healing other people."

"No," he agreed, "It's not."

Something in his eyes was going distant, all of a sudden, like he wasn't really thinking about the other paladins at all, but Allura wasn't sure whether she should ask.

"Thanks for helping," she said instead.

Keith came back to himself. "Of course! They're _my_ friends, too."

"I - I hope you know I'm your friend, as well," Allura answered.

Keith smiled at her, small and tentative. "Yeah. I think I do."

She smiled back. Maybe the humans weren't the only ones getting better.


End file.
